Why can’t people just forgive-and-forget, and let go of the past?
The damaging effects of the massacres, dispossession, cultural annihilation and child-removal are not ‘in the past’ – they are still felt today. The legacy of radical displacement, dismembering of cultural identity, and a persisting climate of racist contempt, is the plethora of social problems suffered in today’s Aboriginal communities. Child stealing wasn’t only traumatic for the children and their families. The cleaving of families bears a trickle-down trauma-effect that impacts on future generations. When individuals are torn from love in their infancy, this has been known to cripple the development of their own parenting skills later in life. The Stolen Generations Report gives the example of one stolen Aboriginal mother, who: ‘didn’t know how to hug her own babies, and had to be shown how to do that.’ When there has been trauma, truth is essential to healing. To deny or minimise the full psychological impact of trauma is to risk driving the sufferer insane. So, to expect Aborigin
